Monday, January 01, 2007

Post Modern Conservatives


In an interesting article on the German Right Wing Conservative revisionist Carl Schmitt, who is the father of modernist conservative anti-parlimentary/ anti-liberalism, Matthew Sharpe contends that Schmitts theories apply to the Howard Government in Australia.


Australian conservatism & Carl Schmitt

What kind of conservatism (understood as non-liberalism) is emerging in Australia? I have mostly tracked this in terms of a hostility to multiculturalism, the national security state, the war on terror and hostility to Islam. I have taken it no further than this apart from gestures to Burke and Schmitt. AlI I've done is introduce Schmitt's idea of state of exception into the discussion as this is what the war on terror stands for.

Matthew Sharpe, in an article entitled A Coincidentia Oppositorium? On Carl Schmitt and New Australian Conservatism in Borderlands, argues that the new conservatism emerging in Australia has its roots in a different political paradigm to the Burkean one that is usually invoked by Tony Abbott and John Howard. Sharpe says that:

...my contention in what follows is that the recent revival within Western academe of the thought of authoritarian political theorist Carl Schmitt - already one more very interesting sign of the times - becomes only more interesting. For Schmitt's radical conservatism did not draw its inspiration from Burke. His conservative heritage instead came principally from Cattholic counter-revolutionaries Joseph de Maistre, Archibald de Bonald, and Donoso Cortes. This essay will read Schmitt's political theory as it were from within today's Australia, in the light or the quickly-changing shadows of our political times.

In fact they apply equally to the leadership style and politics of RH Stephen Harper as well. He has created a crisis of state over major issues, such as the Accountability act when he appeared in the Senate, the first Prime Minister ever to do so, to tell them to pass his act or else. Or else what? Face an election. On every issue that he has faced opposition over he challenges from a position of power; call an election. Knowing the opposition won't.


Matthew Sharpe
A Coincidentia Oppositorium? On Carl Schmitt and
New Australian Conservatism

After having deliberated on these theoretical matters, let me return to present political concerns, and the question of whether our circumstances allow us to say that a new political conservatism is emerging much closer to Schmitt's than to Burke's. A recent essay on "The Life and Legacy of Carl Schmitt" concludes with the ominous affirmation that "for better or for worse, the actuality of Carl Schmitt will soon become apparent" (anon., 2005).

In Part I of this paper, we saw how Schmitt's prescriptive positions are built around a strident critique of parliamentary liberalism, the "murky indistinctions" of its procedures, and its founding, internally divisive and existentially debilitating, faith in "unending discussion". The features of Schmitt's critique, I suggested, do strikingly anticipate the rhetoric, and many of the policies, of the Howard government in Australia which distinguish it from its Liberal predecessors.


In Part II, we proposed that
Schmitt's thought can be differentiated from that of Burke and the anglophone conservative tradition, because it is above all a post-traditional conservatism. Schmitt is under no illusions about the sufficiency of a solely conservative appeal to tradition in the face of political liberalism, and the emerging social democracy of the twentieth century. Although Schmitt recognises the value of tradition or myth in generating cultural unity, that is, his fear that liberalism might collapse the "friend-enemy" distinction push him towards actively advocating the construction of new conflicts - for the sake of generating some post-traditional simulacra of the traditions uniting pre-modern societies. This move is carried out by him through the construction of an authoritarian theory of a decisionist sovereign defended for His existential "decisiveness" in the face of enemies and emergency alone, rather than by reference to any higher or inherited notion of the political good.

Harpers autarchic politics since gaining office reflect the politics of the crisis of the state that Schmitt adovcates. And it began with the crisis of morality of the Liberal party. The Conservatives used this as an excuse to manufacture a both a moral crisis of governance and a moral politcal response to it. As advocated by Schmitt.

Schmitt maintained that liberals overemphasized legality: their quest for a precisely organized system of legal rules was a futile effort to avoid political decision.


The crisis of a dithering Liberal party, indecisive, unable to resolve its own internal party crisis vis a vis being the State allowed Harper to then act as an autarch in power, with is Schmittian Strong Man act. Since then the main theme of the Conservatives is that they are The New Government of Law and Order.

Taking a leaf from the Spanish Catholic counter-revolutionary of the 1830s and 1840s (Donoso), Schmitt goes after middle-class parliamentarians for excessive reliance on legal arrangements.


And he is attempting to get around the Constitution and parliamentary law,as advocated by Schmitt, through Senate Reform, privatizing the Wheat Board and with their Law and Order agenda.

Regardless of our historical and political distance to Carl Schmitt, his writings continue to pose serious questions for any discussion of liberalism and parliamentary democracy,specially at a time when both in the United States and in the European Union the interpretation of constitutional law is undergoing considerable change.

Harpers first publicity act was to go out in uniform as Warrior King to visit the troops he sent to the front lines. And to go to war was not his toughest decision, it was a natural for the Schmittian autark.

In fact Harpers whole politics reeks of Schmitt. His self created political image; the strong man, decisive, decision maker, damn the torpedos. Unlike Mr. Dithers.

The crisis in the last parliment was a Schmittian construct, the Liberals legalistic approach compared to the Conservatives political approach. The Liberals wanted wrong doers exposed, the Conservatives knew who the wrongdoers were, the Liberal Party as a whole, and they wanted them punished.


True democracy, for Schmitt, means popular sovereignty, whereas liberal democracy and liberal parliament aim at curbing popular power. For Schmitt, if democratic identity is taken seriously, only the people should decide on their political destiny, and not liberal representatives, because "no other constitutional institution can withstand the sole criterion of the people's will, however it is expressed."

Harper has adopted the mantel of the Soverign. "The Peoples Soverign", and through his New Government of Canada the people are soverign. Not the politicians. They are not the real voice of the people, the real voice is Harper and his minority government. Best expressed in his outburst that only the Conservatives are the voice of the West and Western Farmers. So Damn the Constitution I will just go around it is his motto as it waqs for the Reform Party.

His is a short term government, one that face replacement by the Natural Governing Party; the Liberals. He must change Federalism and the Federalist State forever. In order not to allow the state to fall back into the hands of the Liberals, Harper must make irrevocable changes in the structure of the State, before he hands it back to the Liberals.

And he has only one chance to that. So his autarchic approach is not personal, a quirk, but is political, a Schmittian purge of all that is Liberal in the Canadian State. And this can be seen by the constant refrain of the Conservatives chanting You had 13 years and you did nothing, every time the Liberals say anything. The party of the Strong Man will do something. Because it may be the only chance they get.


Carl Schmitt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1921, Schmitt became a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he published his essay "Die Diktatur" ("On Dictatorship"), in which he discussed the foundations of the newly-established Weimar Republic, emphasising the office of the Reichspräsident. For Schmitt, a strong dictatorship could embody the will of the people more effectively than any legislative body, as it can be decisive, whereas parliaments inevitably involve discussion and compromise:

“If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”


And Schmitt had a huge influence on the Godfather of modern Neo-Con Politics; Leo Strauss, who influenced both the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld White House and the Calgary School. When I think Strauss and Schmitt in practice besides Harper I think of one of his Calgary School mentors; Herr Professor Ted Morton.

Undoubtedly, the easiest access, and the best introduction, to Schmitt's radically original and disturbing vision of politics is afforded by his slim but immensely suggestive treatise, The Concept of the Political. Far more insinuative than what its modest title claims, the treatise forms, according to Leo Strauss, perhaps the most incisive and astute commentator of this infamous text, 'an inquiry into the "order of human things",... into the State.' Instead of offering an exhaustive and academic definition of the political, Schmitt conceptualizes it 'within the totality of human thought and action', in terms of the primordial and seminal antithesis between 'friend' and 'enemy': 'just as in the field of morals, the ultimate distinctions are good and evil, in esthetics, beautiful and ugly, in economics, profitable and unprofitable, so the significantly political distinction is between friend and foe.' For Schmitt, then, the political is primordial; it comes before the State and transcends its mundane and routine policies. It reveals itself, historically, at the foundational moment of the polity, and conceptually, in the unwritten metaphysics of the constitution. Indeed, the political in the specifically Schmittian sense incarnates existential totality and determines a choice between being and nothingness.
[PDF]

Carl Schmitt in English



See:

Stephen Harper

Autarky

Autarch




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The Great Dismantler


An excellent article on the Harper Legacy of 2006.

Great Dismantler' puts ideology into action

I wonder if he is the Third Anti-Christ that Nostrademus predicted?

Well why not? Everyone else has been suggested, even if that was not the purpose of the cryptic cyphers Nostradmus used.

I am sure if I used the twisted logic of some folks I could make Stephen Harper work out to spell MABUS.

Nostradamus Would Have Been 503 Today

See:

Stephen Harper






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Tories Targeted Tax Cuts


To really get the best deal from the Harper Governments targeted tax cuts you should retire at 55 taking advantage of income splitting with your spouse, and quickly adopt two kids under six.

You or your spouse should then retrain for an apprenticeship in a new trade to take advantage of the tool tax credit.

And make sure those kids are enrolled in a hockey program.

Cause it's you and me paying for those targeted tax credits, thanks to the Tories rolling back the Liberal income tax cuts.

Someone earning $15,000 annually can expect to see $126 in savings, $45,000 will save $106 and if your income is $80,000 you should expect to save $232.


But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation can't agree on the situation with EI and CPP. One person says its going to cost us more;

Sara McIntyre from the Taxpayers Federation says Ottawa will do some extra dipping into your pockets as well. She says we'll be paying more for EI premiums and Canada Pension Plan payments will be increasing as well. McIntyre says there is no reason to pay for for employment insurance since the fund has more than a 40 billion dollar surplus.

Whereas their national spokesperson John Williamson says;

The benefits include a small decrease in employment insurance premiums and a new employment credit, which will offset a modest spike in Canada Pension Plan contributions.

Either way you and I pay will pay $70 more in taxes while selected Canadians get the targeted benefits of the Tories attempt to buy votes with tax credits.

"In some cases (people with young children) will see five times the amount of savings as individual Canadians," said John Williamson, head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

"For individual taxpayers without children the picture's not nearly as sunny. The average tax savings range from $100 to $120 in 2007."

The new lowest personal rate of 15.5 per cent represents a quarter-point rise from 2006, and a half-point increase from the rate set by the Liberals in late 2005.

Williamson calculates that an individual earning $35,000 will see average tax savings ranging from $80 in Newfoundland to $144 for Alberta residents.

Compare that to the savings for families with two children under age 6.

In such a family with a single income-earner making $80,000, the range of savings will be from $963 in Quebec to $1,545 in Alberta, says the federation.

A two-income family earning $80,000 with two young children will save approximately $800 in Quebec up to $940 in Alberta.

See:

Finance

Tax Cuts

Flaherty



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Criminal Capitalism The Story of 2006


In business the stories of 2006 that dominated the news were about the continuing expose of criminal capitalism, as a way of doing business.

Not as an abberation but as the way business is done, until someone is caught.

Whether with their fingers in the till or by refusing to pay for services rendered.

Though this business review missed my favorite story about the high tech media company that gave out backdated stock options to dead board members. Even Joe Volpe couldn't top that.


Corporate Crime Was the news story of 2006.

Conrad Black missed his three-peat as Canadian Business Newsmaker of the year, finishing a solid second behind Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, while the fallen media lord awaits trial in March in Chicago on charges of racketeering, money laundering, fraud and tax evasion.

But Black enlivened 2006 with a theatrical libel case against biographer Peter Newman, winning a statement of regret and dropping a $2-million lawsuit. Later in the year, the publishers of a new muckraking Black biography gleefully quoted his published opinion of the book in their advertising: "smut-mongering... malodorous pot-boiler... sewage."

In a more uplifting piece of litigation, Victoria's Secret sued Canadian lingerie retailer La Senza in March, seeking $1 million for alleged violation of its push-up-bra intellectual property. The suit was dropped late in the year as Victoria's Secret parent company Limited Brands bought La Senza for $710 million.

The year's corporate legal misadventures featured an admission in May by WestJet Airlines that its "highest management levels" were involved in a scheme to steal sensitive information from Air Canada, which had sued for $220 million. WestJet paid $5.5 million in costs and made a $10-million donation to charity.

Canadian-born former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, 65, drove his Mercedes-Benz up to the gates of a Louisiana prison to start a 25-year term for the telecom company's US$11-billion fraud.

On the same late-September day, Andrew Fastow was sentenced to six years for his role as chief financial officer in the 2001 collapse of Enron Corp. A month later, ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling got a 24-year sentence.

Enron founder Kenneth Lay had died of heart failure in July, after being convicted with Skilling in the massive fraud.

America didn't have a monopoly on the fallen mighty: the founder of Korea's collapsed Daewoo conglomerate, Kim Woo-choong, was sentenced to 10 years for embezzlement and fraud. He was also ordered to disgorge US$22 billion.

And Hyundai Motor chairman Chung Mong-koo spent two months in jail before apologizing for setting up slush funds with embezzled money.

Lower on the pecking order of commercial criminality, a California couple who put a severed finger into a bowl of Wendy's chili and tried to extort money from the fast-food chain received prison sentences in January. Jaime Plascencia got a 12-year term and Anna Ayala received a nine-year sentence. On the bright side, she bragged that other prisoners were asking for her autograph.

Wendy's International was in the news again in March when it spun off Tim Hortons Inc. in an initial public offering that had investors lining up like deprived caffeine junkies at Canada's favourite doughnut-shop chain. The issue price in Toronto was $27 and the stock peaked at C$37.99 on its first day. It dipped under $27 during the summer before ending 2006 in the $33 range.

Back on the crime beat, as gasoline prices topped US$3 a gallon last spring, service stations across America reported fuel-related offences ranging from driving off without paying to posing as an employee and draining gasoline from underground tanks.

It was the worst of times for David Edmondson, who resigned as CEO of Radio Shack in February after it came to light that his claim to have university degrees in theology and psychology was false. His departure came after a 62 per cent tumble in the U.S. electronics retailer's quarterly earnings. In June, Edmondson was sentenced to 30 days in jail for drunk driving.

In another case of impaired judgment, Jim Whitehouse, a former RBC Dominion Securities vice-president, had his wrongful-dismissal suit quashed. He had been fired for drunkenly taking a prostitute to the firm's Calgary office at night and leaving her there alone after a dispute over her fee.



See

Criminal Capitalism Blog

Too Greedy

Bring Out Your Dead

Conrad Black

Money Laundering Canadian Style

Bank Theft

Credit Card Fraud

Primitive Accumulation of Capital
Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime


Criminal Capitalism




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Liberal Red Tape


A picture is worth a thousand words and in this case this year end picture from the Liberal Convention really depicts what the party is all about; Red Tape.

While they could never fulfill their Red Book commitments they were damn good at creating more Red Tape.



See

Liberal Party


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What CNN Won't Show You

The Sunday talk news shows were full of reports of Saddam Hussiens death yesterday. But like CNN they praised themselves for restraint from showing his execution. An execution ordered by America. They just can't face the consequences of their actions. So for them here is his execution courtesy of YouTube. Which is why YouTube is the Time Person of the Year. And which is why CNN website will show you the videos of the execution, they just won't show them on TV.

The self righteousness of the MSM over not showing the Saddam execution is pitiful.

I don't believe in televising executions, though in this case it should have been. To show the Americans the logical consequences of their illegal war based on lies.

It has cost many lives including Saddams. What was embarassing to the American cause and its Media is the execution shows people screaming and jeering at a helpless Hussien. Spitting on him and despising him personally not for his crimes but for his political power. His trial and execution was never about Justice, but simple revenge.

He was the ultimate sacrifice for Eid.
The scapegoat.

I believe that the heads of all the states victims should be preserved and placed in the legislatures behind the opposition benches to remind the government of its actions.

If you are going to commit the capital crime of state executions you should be willing to do the time, with your dead victims staring at you.

See:

Hope You Are Happy

Iraqi In Justice

Saddam

Iraq

Capital Punishment



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Carnival of Anarchy #1


Our Carnival of Anarchy #1 is ongoing and is on Anarchist Bloggers and Blogging. We have been posting over the weekend at Carnival of Anarchy.




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Fighting Soldiers Oppose Bush War


Well the US failed to leave Iraq in 2006, better luck in 2007. And despite the Bush Regime insistance that it is winning err pardon me succeding in Iraq the fighting men and women think differently. The only success they see is in the President sucking eggs.

The Military Times released a new poll yesterday of 6,000 active duty U.S. military personnel. The results were revealing. Some highlights: – Only 35 percent said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. – 50 percent believe success in Iraq is likely, down from 83 percent in 2004.


See:

Iraq



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The Cost Of Animal Sacrifice

Our New Years Celebrations this year will be shared by Muslims celebrating Eid. It seems however that there is one problem....not enough animals to sacrifice. Shhhh don't tell PETA.

Perhaps the solution to the high cost of sacrifice is to start to do it virtually, like they do with biology experiments in high schools now. No actual animals were harmed as part of the virtual experiment.


Pakistan Prepares for 'Big Eid'
High price of animals will prevent many from making sacrifices this year

In these days all Pakistani people are busy in arranging things to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha also called "Big Eid," but the high cost of animals in the market are going to make problems.

I remember well Eid-ul-Azha some 10 years back when sacrificial animals were available at cheap rates. In those days everybody seemed to have the potential to sacrifice. But now it's very difficult for a middle class person to perform this religious obligation due to the high prices of animals.

Children used to wait months to touch and look after an animal. The animals were given names, decorated with garlands and colors, and even "marry Eid" was written in color on the animals' body and emotional outbursts were seen on the day of their sacrifice. Those days are no more here in this mechanical life when feeding and taking care was part of the celebrations. People used to take care of the animal throughout the year and on this day sacrifice it. But today animal food is not affordable, so this trend is now limited only to villages. A report by Daily Times shows that an animal eats more food in its life than its own original value.

Many people, who had been slaughtering goats for years regularly on the occasion, will not be able to perform their religious obligation this time.

"The prices of animals are not affordable this year," people complained.

On Eid day people get up early in the morning, take a bath, dress well, eat some special sweet dish, and reach any open place for Eid prayer. This may be a school ground, stadium, or special site for Eid. People say prayers together standing in rows. They hug with their dear ones and come back home to slaughter animals. Usually for this purpose professional butchers are hired.

Animals can be sacrificed on any of the three days. Families cook meat and eat it sitting together. Meat is also distributed to relatives and the poor. Animal skin is donated to deserving people, NGOs, welfare organizations, hospitals, orphanages, and especially to religious parties.

In Pakistan more than 20 million animals are usually slaughtered on this day. More than three quarters of the skins go to religious parties that maintain their annual budget with the sale of donated skins. This not only brings revolution of meat but also speeds up the leather industry.

This practice of sacrificing animals, apart from its religious point of view, is a great social system that provides an opportunity to the deprived sections to enjoy meat for at least a couple of weeks. Some poor people dry meat in sunlight for later usage. Meat is sent to the deprived and poor in different parts of the country, like the earthquake victims in Kashmir, and the Afghan refugee camps in Balochistan. It is also supplied to Somalia, Indonesia, and some African states.

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